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Heh. Keep in mind that people are going to be more likely to comment on something which they have knowledge of or an opinion on, so you will see a certain amount of selection bias in that most of the people who comment on something know something about it, even if there are large numbers of people reading and interested who are just keeping quiet (though of course there are people who also make comments on things they know little about). Also, I know that for some things that I write about, I'm not actually an expert on it beforehand. Instead, I see an interesting question, say to myself "hmm, that's interesting, and I don't actually know the answer", go out to Google, books I own, or just try some experimentation out myself, and then comment on what I found. I usually do try to provide sources and some details about what I did when doing this, but I realize that it may sometimes make me look like more of an expert on topics than I actually am. For example, I have a silver badge in JavaScript on StackOverflow, even though I've only ever written a few dozen lines of JavaSript in my life (in fact, I've probably written more lines of it on StackOverflow than off), since I tend to be good at quickly researching and experimenting with a question and providing a good explanation, not because I'm an expert on JavaScript. So yeah, it's great the Julia writes down her thought and search process while doing this, as it helps people realize that they too can go through the same process and learn new things. |